


there's a girl who's close to me

by gsparkle



Series: fast forward [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Friendship, feelings are hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-15 21:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14798679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsparkle/pseuds/gsparkle
Summary: Nebula may not have been Thanos’ smartest daughter, or strongest, but the one thing she’s always had over Gamora is the hardness of her heart. While Gamora saves planets and raises baby trees and fumbles with that idiot Peter, Nebula remains impervious. She will not be swayed by sentiment. She is not in this universe to make friends.





	there's a girl who's close to me

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: I just told you I liked you but now I’m shy and say “never mind, forget it” and why are you looking at me like that?
> 
> title: there's a girl, the ditty bops

Nebula may not have been Thanos’ smartest daughter, or strongest, but the one thing she’s always had over Gamora is the hardness of her heart. While Gamora saves planets and raises baby trees and fumbles with that idiot Peter, Nebula remains impervious. She will not be swayed by sentiment. She is not in this universe to make friends.

The problem is that she can’t convince any of Gamora’s stupid friends to leave her alone. Rocket leaves spare parts for her arm outside her door. Drax offers her an old sword and turns up every morning asking to fight. Groot climbs onto her shoulder in the mess and tries to make flowers grow from the shoulders of her uniform. Peter apparently demonstrates friendship through the sharing of his headphones, as though Nebula wants something that’s been inside his ear to also be in _her_ ear.

“It’s easier if you just…  _let_ them,” Gamora sighs one night when they’re leaning side by side on the cabinets in the mess, watching Peter and Rocket chase Groot around the room. “Care, I mean. They’re not great at it, but they sure like to try.” Her lips turn up just the slightest bit. “As it turns out, caring about other people isn’t nearly as bad as we were raised to believe.”

“Thanos, wrong?” Nebula says. “Shocking.” She cuts a smirk in Gamora’s direction, but her sister is watching Peter dive after Groot with a bizarre expression on her face. It takes a minute for Nebula to identify that this is something called fondness, something soft and vulnerable and so foreign to Nebula that it makes her throat tighten up.

“Anyway,” Gamora says eventually, nudging her shoulder and nodding in Mantis’ direction. “You should try it. Go talk to Mantis, she’s probably the least annoying of them.” Nebula hesitates, and Gamora raises an eyebrow. “Unless you’re scared?”

“I’m not scared of _anything,_ ” Nebula lies, hating that her sister knows her this well. _Sentiment._ “ _You’re_ the one who’s scared of her.” She’s noticed that Gamora moves carefully around Mantis, never as easy as she is with the rest of them.

She’s hoping to start a disagreement as a distraction, but Gamora only crosses her arms with an irritating smile. “Having boundaries isn’t the same as being scared,” she informs Nebula. “And you’re stalling.”

“I’m _not_ \--ugh!” There’s nothing else to do but stomp across the room and take a seat on the sofa next to Mantis, who has her knees tucked up under her chin, watching the chaos with glee. She glows when she’s happy, her antennae emitting a soft light that makes her eyes shine as she turns a smile upon Nebula.

“Hello,” she says in her solemn way. Nebula nods, but doesn’t say anything, and pointedly avoids looking at Gamora, who is flicking her fingers and raising her eyebrows in a _talk to her_ sort of gesture. “You are uncomfortable,” Mantis announces after a minute.

Nebula stiffens and shifts away. “No, I’m not,” she lies.

Mantis looks down at the rigid divide Nebula is holding between them. “I do not have to touch you to know,” she says, exceedingly gentle. “You are uncomfortable, and Gamora is happy, and Groot is--” She breaks off as the tree in question, tired of being chased, runs over and leaps into her arms. “Groot is _mischievous,_ ” she laughs. She’s gotten better at laughing since they first met on Berhert, Nebula notices; it’s not so harsh anymore, so forced and unfamiliar. It could even be called _nice,_ if there was ever such a pointless word in Nebula’s vocabulary. And that’s exactly what this whole scene is, _nice_ : a family that isn’t hers, best described by words she’s never used.

“I have to go,” Nebula says, standing quickly and ejecting herself before anyone points out that she’s the one thing that’s not like the others, that doesn’t belong.

\---

Nebula doesn’t _like_ people.

She doesn’t like anything, in general. The concept of preferences, to her, is entirely ludicrous. Every other person, place, or thing in the universe can only be considered a commodity, something with an empirical value based on how well it can help her achieve her goals. Whether or not she enjoys interacting with said person, place, or thing is irrelevant.

“So you don’t like the cannon?” Rocket asks when she finishes this explanation. “Well, give it back, then, I can still turn it into a bomb.”

“No,” Nebula says, clutching the machinery to her chest. It’s sleek and powerful and feels like it belongs with her even if she can’t articulate why. Rocket eyes her and she says, haltingly, “I--I see its value. I’ll keep it.” Nobody’s ever given her a gift before. “Thank you.”

“Whatever,” says Rocket, ambling away. At the door he turns and says, “You know, Quill says the best revenge is living well, and while we both know that Quill is a certified dumbass--” He pauses, thinks. “Nah. Never mind.”

Alone, Nebula examines the word _like_ again. Does she enjoy the power the cannon holds, and will grant her in a fight? Yes. Does its appearance and capabilities please her? Also yes. She studies the cannon for a long minute before popping open the panel of her forearm and installing it. Can something be useful _and_ likeable? A test fire of the cannon blows the handle off one of her cabinets, and she smiles. _Yes._

Armed with this new understanding, Nebula tries to figure out if she actually does like other things, and finds, incredibly, that she does. She likes the ripe yaro root cake Drax makes, sugary and tart. She likes coming into the kitchen to find Groot asleep, turning the table into a plateau of vines and fragrant flowers. She likes having food and a soft bed and a sister to bicker pointlessly with. She likes challenging Peter to spar and then inevitably beating him, flinging him to the ground while everyone else cheers over his favorite song.

But these are all things _about_ or _around_ people; she still isn’t sure that there’s an actual person out there that she likes head to toe. “That’s not true,” Gamora says as they lie in the star lounge one night, passing a bottle of A'askavarian wine between them as the stars shoot overhead. “You like me.”

“Debatable,” Nebula snorts.

“And you like Mantis,” Gamora points out, a confusing and cryptic half-smile on her lips.

Nebula pauses, swallows her immediate retort. She _does_ enjoy teaching Mantis how to shoot a blaster and watching her laugh with Drax. Sometimes, when Peter is dancing Gamora around the main cabin and Groot is trying to get Rocket to play hide-and-seek, Mantis sits next to Nebula in the window and tells bad jokes or tells inappropriately gruesome stories or asks honest questions with wide, solemn eyes. And when she prods at these interactions, Nebula thinks yes, she _does_ like Mantis, but it’s not the same way she likes Gamora, and trying to tease out the difference between these two versions of liking makes her stomach flip around in a pleasantly unpleasant sort of way.

“Of course I like Mantis,” she snaps, brusque and defensive. “Who doesn’t?” She knows she definitely does _not_ like the way Gamora looks at her, eyebrows snapped up to her hairline, like she knows something Nebula doesn’t. “It--it doesn’t matter,” Nebula insists, even though she’s starting to feel like it maybe does in some tangled up way she doesn’t understand. “Look--watch this.” She gets up and stalks out of the star lounge, assuming that Gamora will be right on her heels as she reaches and begins pounding on Mantis’ door.

“Is something wrong?” Mantis asks when her door slides noiselessly open. She peers at Nebula’s face in concern. “You are agitated.”

Nebula attributes the heat in her cheeks to the wine she’s been drinking. “Mantis,” she announces in her most officious voice. “I like you.” It feels like there should be something else to say here, but she can’t do anything other than stand there and then, eventually, say, “Never mind. Forget it.”

“Oh,” says Mantis, her eye huge. Her antenna glow pinkish-gold, a color that Nebula’s never seen before, bathing them both in a soft, warm light. “Thank you for telling me.” Something in the circuitry of Nebula’s heart must be faulty, because Mantis smiles and she feels like she can’t breathe. “I also like you.”

For a second, she thinks her whole system is overloading, but the feeling passes and she can turn to Gamora, who’s leaning against the wall and smirking, and say, “ _See_? No big deal.” She tries to hide the shaking of her hands.

“My mistake,” Gamora says in the voice that means she hasn’t made a mistake at all. She smiles as her eyes flick from Nebula’s shaking hands to the rose glow emanating from Mantis. “I _clearly_ had the wrong end of things.” And she saunters off, leaving Nebula to stare after her in confusion.


End file.
